Digressions&Impressionstag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-1185191676405081722019-08-05T14:41:12+02:00TypePadOn Being Inside Leibniz's Mill (on Remainder, Smith and Kramnick)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e388340240a472c35f200c2019-08-05T14:41:12+02:002019-08-05T14:41:12+02:00Remainder’s way turns out to be an extreme form of dialectical materialism-it’s a book about a man who builds in order to feel. A few days after the fake homeless epiphany, at a party, while in the host’s bathroom, the Enactor sees a crack in the plaster in the wall....Eric Schliesser

But somehow, I had completely forgotten that Smith treated the seven year path (and presumably many rejections of) Remainder to publication as exemplary of "our ailing literary culture." (71) This culture represents unhealty times. In healthy days literature has multiple, possible futures. This (in 2008) is now denied. The opposition between Netherland and Remainder is a form of prophecy in order to re-open paths (and also recall the American metafiction -- "Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon, Gaddis, David Foster Wallace" [I would add Fran Ross's Oreo]-- now languishing in a safe corner of literary history (73)). Since that very literature culture has rewarded Smith greatly, one cannot help avoid sensing some ambivalence (she uses "violence") in these remarks.

As Smith's description reveals, Remainder presents a character, a reenactor, who is very much a part inside Leibniz's Mill argument:

But the novel suggests that Leibniz is inviting us to look in the wrong place. Perception is co-constituted by the body moving in space, the body's interaction with its umwelt, and repetition with (to echo Deleuze) occasional variation. Kramnick expertly connects Remainder to recent developments in enactive philosophy of mind (although understates the significance of repetition). Strikingly, the only feeling that occurs inside the reenactor, occurs when a pattern is recognized as, and thereby projected, as having occurred before. This constitutes a reenaction as going well.

The reenactor is a person who suffered an accident. His experience of recovering motor-control, which the able bodied ordinarily take for granted, reveals that the only person with truly fluid movement is a fake (De Niro's screen character). There is no what it's like of that. Once our behavior is (now quoting Kramnick) "slowed down and made unfamiliar, the experience in each does not layer on top of the [body-]motion. It is, rather, identical to it." (135) This claim is made visible (I almost wrote felt) by a kind of stripping away, that is, abstraction.

Both Smith and Kramnick note that Remainder's aesthetic is fully (ahh, I almost wrote self-conscious) present in the art. I quote Kramnick's description before I close with a comment:

One part of the (serious) joke here is that the teacher echoes (with a non-trivial difference) Vasari's definition of the nature of sculpture:* "Sculpture is an art which by removing all that is superfluous from the material and reduces it to that form designed in the artist's mind." Of course, the joke is that the traditional artist and his design has been removed from the (perhaps mis-remembered) teaching; there is now -- as Leibniz feared -- only motion and rough pattern recognition.

That would have been the best end to this long digression. But the other or same part of the joke is, of course, that one encounters the reenactor and his teacher through the words of McCarthy and (ahh) one's imaginary participation with these...and just then one recognizes the looming regress.

*On the internet the remark is often attributed to Michelangelo. This is not all wrong because Michelangelo said something similar in a 1549 letter to Varchi. See the long note on by G. Baldwin Brown in Vasari on Technique, translated by Louisa S. Maclehose (pp. 179-180). My translation is taken from p. 143 (with modest modification).

Jonathan Swift and Pessimistic Meta-Inductiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e38834022ad3884a2a200c2019-01-12T02:26:46+01:002019-01-12T02:26:47+01:00[Aristotle’s ghost] freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally exploded. He predicted...Eric Schliesser

We are inclined to read Swift's version as, perhaps, displaying his scientific experience. How could one claim that Newton is mere 'fashion' and founded upon 'conjecture?' In his edition of Swift, Sir Walter Scott, suggest that this passage shows "the Dean understood little natural philosophy."* Scott may correct about this. While one can wonder why another novelist fails to recognize that a writer need not agree with his character, I leave that aside. But Scott underestimates Swift's remarks.

First, note that Swift correctly grasps that Newton had made Descartes's vortex theory obsolete. It's little noticed fact that Newton offered the first quantitative vortex theory and showed that it was incompatible with the empirical evidence (for explanation see this paper--the argument is Smeenk's.) This was by no means the consensus everywhere. (And, in fact, Newton's argument rested in part on a subtle mistake in his treatment of torque recognized by Bernoulli.) But Newton had clearly shifted the burden of evidence; Descartes version was doomed.

Second, it is worth noting that 1726 was also the year of publication of the third edition of the Principia. (So, Gulliver was written in the shadow of the second edition.) Even so, the most controversial empirical results of the Principia (shape of the Earth, universal gravity, the lunar orbit etc.) were still very much contested. These were not settled until more than a decade later in groundbreaking work of Maupertuis, Clairaut, and Euler. While there were many sympathetic defenses of Newton in circulation, that even in the British Isles, Berkeley and Toland had demonstrated that there was space for works that were not uncritical of Newton (along many dimensions).

Now, one may still think Swift should not have said (or let Aristotle's Ghost say via Gulliver) that the Principia was grounded in conjecture. But that was not an uncommon view (see here for evidence) among the learned who had good evidence to think that the empirical world did not favor Newton's theory and that he violated standards of intelligibility.

Anticipating Kuhn (and Adam Smith), Aristotle's Ghost treats the commitment to a particular scientific paradigm as akin to a religion. And while he does not claim that the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories is entirely due to social context, social context is a key factor. And, in fact, it would be useful to read this passage alongside the critical treatment of the royal society in his description of his visit to Laputa and the floating island, but that's for another voyage, I mean digression.

*I don't fully get the whole footnote, and I would love for somebody to explain it to me.

On Bullying, Conformism, Self-Censorship, and Clinical Depression: The Religiosity of Fahrenheit 451, revisitedtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e38834022ad3853a04200d2018-07-31T14:33:51+02:002018-07-31T15:21:51+02:00Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people...Eric Schliesser

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, and mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.....With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?--From Ray Bradbury (1953) Fahrenheit 451, pp. 75-6

Judging by the results of a Google search, which shows me links to many essay writing companies, the passage quoted is extremely popular among high school and college students. So, for all I know what follows has been worked out countless times before (and, if not, will -- because it's free -- perhaps become a staple of such essays). The narrator here is Beatty, the fire captain and boss of the main protagonist, Guy Montag. Montag -- his name (man Monday) an allusion to Crusoe's man Friday* -- is part of a book burning brigade (firemen). The speech occurs just as Montag's growing doubts about his work and society are crystallizing.

As it turns out, Beatty's own stance toward his own work and society is also ambivalent, but this is shown more indirectly. Be that as it may, he understands legal censorship as originating in self-censorship which arises out of three elements: a do-no-harm principle, mass democracy, and a heterogeneous population. The embrace of a do no harm principle is not a deeply felt normative stance, but rather dictated by prudence--minorities can organize and create unwanted controversy and hurt sales. In a heterogeneous population it will be difficult to avoid giving offense except by embracing a certain blandness and conformity. The idea being that in a homogeneous society free speech is more natural.

The previous paragraph may be thought speculative. But Beatty himself goes on to call attention to the two key elements, first not everybody is born equal and, second, he exposes the conformist violence at the core of his consumerist, mass-media society when he describes the school bullying of the boy** that stands out. In an age of McCarthyism, Bradbury need not have done it, but the political significance of bullying is made explicit (with a nod to the Constitution)-- bullying makes us equal. That is, rather than being a bug of a democratic polity, conformist violence is a feature of it.+ While African Americans are effaced, the burning of witches at Salem haunts the whole narrative. It is no surprise, then, that such a society, which disguises its own structural violence by, paradoxically presenting it as spectacle, expresses it abroad with a violent foreign policy.

To what degree Beatty's origin story fits the facts is an open question. (This is a society in which the printer Benjamin Franklin has become the patron saints of book burners. There is a Swiftian fondness for reversals.) Beatty's diagnosis of the conformism and self-censorship of modern mass culture echoes the meritocratic critique of democracy first developed by Mill (recall here and here). Beatty is an interesting character because he clearly is the nerd in disguise (he is well read despite the prohibition) who goes on to serve a soul-less and cruel regime.++ The regime is grounded in elections, but no less cruel for it. Its bad laws rooted in public opinion.

This last point deserves more emphasis. The underlying horror of the society depicted is that human life in it is trivialized. Something that Guy Montag becomes increasingly sensitive to. This lack of soul is what creates an undercurrent of clinical despair and dangerous thrill-seeking; where fun is everything. It's a bit surprising that Bradbury is not thought of as the prophet of the clinical depression epidemic of a society addicted to communication by (ahh) screens; this is a society in which all feeling is at the surface and in which our desires for goods are made to outstrip our means, but no connection intimate. For such intimacy is only possible -- the point is made explicit right at the start of the novel [Clarisse does not want anything from him]-- if it is not instrumentalized.

For, while Bradbury himself facilitated the idea that this was a book about the perils of censorship, the truer theme of the book is the pernicious effects of spiritual deprivation on individual and society. At the start of the book, when talking to Clarisse, Montag understands himself (cf. Plato's Cave), by chance, as somebody watching a puppet show. Clarisse is likened to an angel more than once. She is the prophetic light that points the way out of the cave.*** It's no surprise then in the aftermath of rational-man-made cataclysm -- mutually assured destruction is the fruit of the tree of knowledge --, the novel closes with a quote from Revelation (22:2), which not only prophecies such a destruction, but also the promise of a light that follows. Those that have read the novel will understand my conclusion: there is only redemption if you can hold on to a text.

*This is worth further exploration.

+I don't mean to suggest that Fahrenheit 451 condemns the exclusion of Blacks--rather, what makes it so disconcerting is that it explains the mechanism behind social exclusion.

**Fahrenheit 451 starts with an example of a non-conformist girl, Clarisse McClellan, but she is the exception. The other women are portrayed as treacherous, bland, and cruel (not the least to themselves). They exercise their right to vote by voting for the best looking candidate with the best name.

++ I don't deny that he may have ended up loathing himself for this.

***That a prophet is required to escape the cave becomes the standard reading with Al-Farabi.

On the Civilized vs Savages, reconsidered.tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401b8d2b60fcf970c2017-10-19T17:51:20+02:002017-10-19T18:01:17+02:00Is it possible, without shuddering with horror, to read in history of the barbarous and useless torments that were coolly invented and executed by men who were called sages? Who does not tremble at the thoughts of thousands of wretches, whom their misery, either caused or tolerated by the laws...Eric Schliesser

Is it possible, without shuddering with horror, to read in history of the barbarous and useless torments that were coolly invented and executed by men who were called sages? Who does not tremble at the thoughts of thousands of wretches, whom their misery, either caused or tolerated by the laws which favoured the few and outraged the many, had forced in despair to return to a state of nature; or accused of impossible crimes, the fabric of ignorance and superstition; or guilty only of having been faithful to their own principles; who, I say, can, without horror, think of their being torn to pieces with slow and studied barbarity, by men endowed with the same passions and the same feelings? A delightful spectacle to a fanatic multitude!...

The punishment of death is pernicious to soci­ety, from the example of barbarity it affords. If the passions, or necessity of war, have taught men to shed the blood of their follow creatures, the laws which are intended to moderate the ferocity of mankind, should not increase it by examples if barbarity, the more horrible, as this punish­ment is usually attended with formal pngeantry. Is it not absurd, that the laws, which detect and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent mur­der, publicly commit murder themselves? Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria [1764] An Essay on Crimes and Punishment (96-97 & 104-105).

The passages above are parts of his attacks on torture and the death penalty. (Amongst other things, he is also against anonymous accusations, and he favors a clear separation between judge and state prosecutor.) He is uncompromising against torture. And the only exception he grudgingly grants is one during the state of emergency: "it can only be necessary when a nation is on the verge of recovering or losing its liberty; or in times of absolute anarchy, when the disorders themselves hold the place of laws." (It's grudging because he relentlessly focuses on likely abuses of any law.)

As an aside, and to forestall misunderstanding, Beccaria's point is not to promote quiet, capital punishment without spectacle. For such punishment would defeat the purpose of punishment which is almost entirely meant to deter other people's future crimes. And so any punishment needs to be visible to the rest of society. This leads him, in fact, to justify a form of imprisonment that he (quite rightly) calls slavery--the prisoner needs to be seen to work. (His moral psychology justifying this is clearly indebted to Hume or a Humean.)

That is to say, in Beccaria's hands the opposition between barbarism vs (law-governed) civilization is brought home and applied to Europe. And Europe comes out looking very barbarous which incentivizes criminals to become more violent and criminal and, thereby, (note the first passage above) returns to the state of nature. (So, for Beccaria, the state of nature is, as Spinoza suggests, possible within advanced society.) This, in turn, only benefits rulers who can justify further repression and savagery (etc.)

In fact, incentives are crucial to his general approach. I'll offer two examples of this: first, in his treatment of credibility of evidence, he writes: "the credibility of his evidence will be in proportion as he is interested in declar­ing or concealing the truth. Hence it appears, how frivolous is the reasoning of those, who reject the testimony of women on account of their weakness; how puerile it is, not to admit the evidence of those who are under sentence of death, because they are dead in law; and how irrational, to exclude persons branded with infamy: for in all these cases they ought to be credited, when they have no interest in giving false testimony." (48) Witnesses are crucial to his general penal reform because he attacks oaths, torture, and duels as means toward establishing the truth in law-courts. The inclusion of women as credible witnesses is especially notable, because in general Beccaria is a defender of a modernized patriarchy. By this I mean, that he uses republican and social contract reasoning to attack the paternal tyranny over the household in order to create masculine equality (which excludes women).**

Let me wrap up. Beccaria holds up a mirror to his European readers, who think of themselves as progressive, embracing mathematical sciences, and enlightened. What he shows is savage barbarism. But unlike say, Swift or Sade, he does so not to undermine the self-conception of the project of enlightened humanity (in different ways), but to encourage his readers to adopt reforms that may help the mirrored reality live up to its professed ideals.

*Why not give up on the distinction; in part, this post is a response to that concern.

Pateman On the Shaky Foundations of Liberal Contractualismtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401b7c928f9bc970b2017-10-12T22:48:22+02:002017-10-12T22:53:36+02:00Exploitation is possible precisely because...contracts about property in the person place right of command in the hands of one party to the contract....The genius of contract theorists has been to present both the original contract and actual contracts as exemplifying and securing individual freedom. On the contrary, in contract theory...Eric Schliesser

Exploitation is possible precisely because...contracts about property in the person place right of command in the hands of one party to the contract....The genius of contract theorists has been to present both the original contract and actual contracts as exemplifying and securing individual freedom. On the contrary, in contract theory universal freedom is always an hypothesis, a story, a political fiction. Contract always generates political right in the form of relations of domination and subordination....Carole Pateman (1988) The Sexual Contract, 8

In re-reading, because teaching, Pateman's Sexual Contract, I was struck by the claim that contract always generates 'political right in the form of relations of domination and subordination.' As I was contemplating her 'always,' I suddenly realized that I had not quite grasped the depth of her challenge to liberal contractualism. For, I had always (falsely) assumed that she was making the non-trivial, albeit limited, point that given empirical conditions of social hierarchy and unfairness, existing contracts re-inscribe forms of domination and subordination. That insight is indeed what explains the idea behind the first sentence quoted above: contracts produce inequality of power (income, status, etc.) because, regardless of the nature of formal (abstract) equality that is presupposed in the making of any contract, in the real world contracts always tend to reflect the relative bargaining positions of the parties to the contract. Or they tacitly create out-groups not party to, and subordinated by, the contract. This is why even commercial contracts can, and generally do, reinforce economic and political/social hierarchies, even if over time they may shift them in unexpected and unintended ways. Pateman is right to call attention to sexual and commercial exploitation grounded in contracts.

But while the limited point reveals that historically contractualism is compromised by the many injustices it legitimates, the point is itself not fatal to a liberal contractualism worth having. All it requires, in response, is more stringent conditions on the material and social/economic (etc.) pre-conditions of a legitimate contract. While this may be a step too far for many folk who are attracted to (say a Lockean) contractualism, so much the worse for them. (That's to say if you want to be an apologist for hierarchy, good for you.)

I now recognize that Pateman's point is more thoroughgoing. To grasp the more fundamental insight, it is worth being reminded of the conceptual difference between your average contract and your standard promise. The key distinction is that a promise has no enforcement mechanism outside the promising parties. A contract worth its name, by contrast, doesn't merely bring parties to it together, but also introduces a credible, enforcement mechanism (a binding arbiter, judicial review, etc.). This enforcement mechanism has to be a stronger (in the relevant sense) power such that enforcement is credible.

Thus, conceptually every genuine contract -- even when we only think of it as a source of justification -- presupposes subordination to some higher authority. (The absence of such higher authority – as in some international treaties – make some contacts more akin to promises than to contracts.) While sometimes one of the parties to the contract may well be able to supply the power and thus credibility of enforcement (alliances with a hegemonic power are like this), this does not undermine Pateman’s insight. While it's not the main point of most contracts, all contacts legitimize the contracting parties' subordination to a higher party.+ In most contracts this higher power is the judiciary, but in the founding contract this is the state/sovereign (etc.).

Now, for Hobbes – and unlike most critics (and friends) of Hobbes, Pateman understands the strengths of his approach -- (civil) subordination to the state is a feature not a bug. The whole point of the contract is the generation and simultaneous subordination to a higher power, a mortal god, in his fine words. Of course, Hobbes does not advocate subordination for its own sake; they are supposed to make possible the 'fruits' of peace. And if one has sympathy for consequentialist justifications that may be well good enough. (Obviously it ought not be good enough once one has confronted, say, Pateman’s or Mills’s reminders of the many ways in which both hypothetical and actual contracts have inscribed gendered and racial (etc.) patterns of exclusion and domination.)

Hobbes is no liberal so for him subordination to another is a price worth paying. But it is peculiar that subsequent liberals would sign up for a way of conceptualization the political order that at its core presupposes subordination to a stronger party. Whether one thinks liberalism as, at heart, a program that is in the business of preventing harm, or promoting freedom, or the preservation of human dignity (etc.), it has, in practice, an instinctive abhorrence of systems of hierarchy. This is, at heart, liberalism’s argument against feudalism and slavery. (They are not primarily opposed for their bad consequences.) Even the defense of commerce is, at heart, not utilitarian or focused on economic growth (or on the virtues it promotes)—it is rather grounded on the desirability of mutual exchange, which presupposes, if not always mutual recognition and the legitimacy of each side’s desires and longings, at least acknowledged indifference to these.

As a non-trivial aside, it is, of course, perfectly possible – I believe Jacob Levy taught me this -- that as a historical fact, liberalism arose as a mitigating project against an existing strong state (say, Tudor absolutism, French despotism, etc.).* That is, it’s the reality of a certain species of existing subordination that generates the liberal project. So, it may well be the case that practices of certain kind of subordination are the historical-social preconditions for the very desirability of liberalism.** So, liberalism may well be the bastard-child of state power, and aims to diminish it or re-direct it to less dangerous ends.

Be that as it may, Pateman’s conceptual point should give contractarian liberals pause: it may – let’s stipulate -- be legitimate to choose one’s self-subordination. But it is peculiar to inscribe one’s subordination (to a higher power, etc.) in the very ground and justification of the political order. That's, in fact, what nationalists do (recall). And it is especially peculiar if such self-subordination is inevitable given that one understands the order as a contract. (This is no less peculiar than the obsession of some contemporary liberals in finding justification for the use of state power against others.)*** That is to say, if liberalism is de facto a normative enterprise that presupposes the state and seeks to ameliorate it by promoting fair and just (and harm-reducing) institutions, we should avoid conceptualizations that commit us to hierarchy from the start--that's just asking for trouble.

+I have to admit I am not a big fan of the very idea of submission to the moral law, but at least it is neither a person nor a state.

**I resist the tendency of some Marxist critiques of liberalism to see in liberalism as an arm of capitalism; mercantilism is the ideology of (state-sponsored) capitalism.

*** Obviously, a Republican can save contractualism by introducing popular sovereignty or a general will, etc. Such that one's subordination is simultaneously an assertion of self-rule. Today I am indifferent to such a move. Here I just note that

When is a book not a Classic?; On Huxley's Crome Yellow.tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401bb09ba15de970d2017-08-18T13:54:14+02:002017-08-18T14:17:37+02:00If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can perceive merit in a writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a different matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself-...Eric Schliesser

If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can perceive merit in a writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a different matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself- not independently of the observer, indeed, but independently of the mood of the observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot be true that a poem is good on Monday and bad on Tuesday. But if one judges the poem by the appreciation it arouses, then it can certainly be true, because appreciation, or enjoyment, is a subjective condition which cannot be commanded. For a great deal of his waking life, even the most cultivated person has no aesthetic feelings whatever, and the power to have aesthetic feelings is very easily destroyed. When you are frightened, or hungry, or are suffering from toothache or sea-sickness, King Lear is no better from your point of view than Peter Pan. You may know in an intellectual sense that it is better, but that is simply a fact which you remember: you will not feel the merit of King Lear until you are normal again. And aesthetic judgement can be upset just as disastrously — more disastrously, because the cause is less readily recognized — by political or moral disagreement. If a book angers, wounds or alarms you, then you will not enjoy it, whatever its merits may be. If it seems to you a really pernicious book, likely to influence other people in some undesirable way, then you will probably construct an aesthetic theory to show that it has no merits. Current literary criticism consists quite largely of this kind of dodging to and fro between two sets of standards. And yet the opposite process can also happen: enjoyment can overwhelm disapproval, even though one clearly recognizes that one is enjoying something inimical. Swift, whose world-view is so peculiarly unacceptable, but who is nevertheless an extremely popular writer, is a good instance of this. Why is it that we don't mind being called Yahoos, although firmly convinced that we are not Yahoos?...

Swift did not possess ordinary wisdom, but he did possess a terrible intensity of vision, capable of picking out a single hidden truth and then magnifying it and distorting it. The durability of Gulliver's Travels goes to show that, if the force of belief is behind it, a world-view which only just passes the test of sanity is sufficient to produce a great work of art.--Orwell (1946) "Politics vs. Literature — An examination of Gulliver's travels."

I read novels primarily for entertainment. As Orwell once argued you get a lot of value for money. But, and this probably marks me as unsophisticated, I also read them for their instruction in the art of living, that is, in wisdom. By the 'art of living,' I do not mean to suggest that novels are sophisticated self-help books (although Alain de Botton is not wrong to insist they are sometimes this, too), but rather that I see them as sources of insight about (ahh) anything. I do so because professional philosophy largely and steadfastly lost interest wisdom. So, for me novels are a means to help perfect my imperfect philosophy. Some of my these Impressionsare a partial diary of my engagement with this project.

One entered the world [...] having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.

Even if one were to grant the truth of these thoughts (and ignore the false, even fatal opposition between life and ideas), there is no sign that he is willing to struggle free from education's effects. I could go on and on pointing out the contradictions and cliches in this timid poet's outlook. None of these, of course, prevent him from being a potentially sympathetic character. But while his shy, longings are familiar enough sources of sympathetic identification, he is revealed as an empty shell, a self-described lover of "words" (and not "things and ideas and people') in two revealing episodes.

First, Denis's inability to act, even when offered a proper exemplar, is revealed in an extended set-piece in chapter XIX. The estate's pater familias, Henry Wimbush, has been working on a history of the family from which he reads to the gathered guests and family in the evenings. One night he tells the story of his not-so-aristocratic grandfather who won the hand of one of the aristocratic, lovely Lapiths, with a mixture of curiosity and not entirely moral, spirit. Denis is incapable of taking a hint.

Second, and in many ways this is the climax of the novel (chapter XXIV), Denis discovers he is not "his own severest critic" when he reads Jenny's red notebook full of drawings. (He never wonders why he is able to find it.) Jenny is deaf, and he has shown little interest in her throughout the novel. It turns out he recognizes his own ridiculousness and foolishness in Jenny's caricatures of him. While his hurt is understandable, he draws entirely the wrong lesson:

There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes besides himself....One is apt...to be so spellbound by the spectacle of one's own personality that one forgets that the spectacle presents itself to other people as well as to oneself."

None of this is false. But he shows no curiosity about Jenny (not even after his discovery), who is revealed as the most interesting person among the babbling other guests. In fact, it's clear that his lack of curiosity (a leading theme throughout the slim novel) condemns him not to get anything he wants. This is made abundantly clear to the reader.

It may seem perverse that I grant that the book is a comic novel of ideas -- in the way, say Zadie Smith's White Teeth is -- and yet fail to engage with neither the comedy nor the ideas. There is, in fact, quite a bit of comedy, and not a few moments that are the jumping-off places for further reflection (about which some other time). But by not challenging, even flattering the reader's felt superiority to its main character, the novel stimulates our pride and, most fatally, our complacency and so is unworthy of our engagement.***

*Maybe there are other clues that can nail down the exact time, but the main evidence is chapter ix about the effect-less, apocalyptic sermon preached by Mr. Bodiham about four years after the start of the war in 1914 and "having come to an end." Perhaps, the war helps explain the absence of sons.

**The pun is made explicit when we learn that the family's founder, and the first builder of the estate, had an "obsession with the proper placing of his privies." Even so, contrary to appearance, the piss is not taking on the aristocracy.

***This ought to prevent it from being a classic. But, of course, if it keeps finding passionate readers I am wrong.

On Two Styles of Conservatism; or Is Conservatism a Philosophical Tradition?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401bb09a26f3b970d2017-06-05T13:40:28+02:002017-06-05T14:43:45+02:00The year 2016 marked a dramatic change of political course for the English-speaking world, with Britain voting for independence from Europe and the United States electing a president promising a revived American nationalism. Critics see both events as representing a dangerous turn toward “illiberalism” and deplore the apparent departure from...Eric Schliesser

The year 2016 marked a dramatic change of political course for the English-speaking world, with Britain voting for independence from Europe and the United States electing a president promising a revived American nationalism. Critics see both events as representing a dangerous turn toward “illiberalism” and deplore the apparent departure from “liberal principles” or “liberal democracy,” themes that surfaced repeatedly in conservative publications over the past year. Perhaps the most eloquent among the many spokesmen for this view has been William Kristol, who, in a series of essays in the Weekly Standard, has called for a new movement to arise “in defense of liberal democracy.” In his eyes, the historic task of American conservatism is “to preserve and strengthen American liberal democracy,” and what is needed now is “a new conservatism based on old conservative—and liberal—principles.” Meanwhile, the conservative flagship Commentary published a cover story by the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari entitled “Illiberalism: The Worldwide Crisis,” seeking to raise the alarm about the dangers to liberalism posed by Brexit, Trump, and other phenomena.

These and similar examples demonstrate once again that more than a few prominent conservatives in America and Britain today consider themselves to be not only conservatives but also liberals at the same time. Or, to get to the heart of the matter, they see conservatism as a branch or species of liberalism—to their thinking, the “classical” and most authentic form of liberalism. According to this view, the foundations of conservatism are to be found, in significant measure, in the thought of the great liberal icon John Locke and his followers. It is to this tradition, they say, that we must turn for the political institutions—including the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism—that secure the freedoms of religion, speech, and the press; the right of private property; and due process under law. In other words, if we want limited government and, ultimately, the American Constitution, then there is only one way to go: Lockean liberalism provides the theoretical basis for the ordered freedom that conservatives strive for, and liberal democracy is the only vehicle for it.

Many of those who have been most outspoken on this point have been our long-time friends. We admire and are grateful for their tireless efforts on behalf of conservative causes, including some in which we have worked together as partners. But we see this confusion of conservatism with liberalism as historically and philosophically misguided. Anglo-American conservatism is a distinct political tradition—one that predates Locke by centuries. Its advocates fought for and successfully established most of the freedoms that are now exclusively associated with Lockean liberalism, although they did so on the basis of tenets very different from Locke’s. Indeed, when Locke published his Two Treatises of Government in 1689, offering the public a sweeping new rationale for the traditional freedoms already known to Englishmen, most defenders of these freedoms were justly appalled. They saw in this new doctrine not a friend to liberty but a product of intellectual folly that would ultimately bring down the entire edifice of freedom. Thus, liberalism and conservatism have been opposed political positions in political theory since the day liberal theorizing first set foot in England.

Today’s confusion of conservative political thought with liberalism is in a way understandable, however. In the great twentieth-century battles against totalitarianism, conservatives and liberals were allies: They fought together, along with the Communists, against Nazism. After 1945, conservatives and liberals remained allies in the war against Communism. Over these many decades of joint struggle, what had for centuries been a distinction of vital importance was treated as if it were not terribly important, and in fact, it was largely forgotten.

But since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, these circumstances have changed. The challenges facing the Anglo-American tradition are now coming from other directions entirely. Radical Islam, to name one such challenge, is a menace that liberals, for reasons internal to their own view of the political world, find difficult to regard as a threat and especially difficult to oppose in an effective manner. But even more important is the challenge arising from liberalism itself. It is now evident that liberal principles contribute little or nothing to those institutions that were for centuries the bedrock of the Anglo-American political order: nationalism, religious tradition, the Bible as a source of political principles and wisdom, and the family. Indeed, as liberalism has emerged victorious from the battles of the last century, the logic of its doctrines has increasingly turned liberals against all of these conservative institutions. On both of these fronts, the conservative and liberal principles of the Anglo-American tradition are now painfully at cross-purposes. The twentieth-century alliance between conservatism and liberalism is proving increasingly difficult to maintain.

I tend to think of Conservatism as a humane, anti-philosophical tradition (or if it has an esoteric philosophy, it is skeptical in tenor) rooted in a status quo bias grounded in gradualist risk aversion, cognizant of human folly, and willing to embrace a plurality of human value (e.g., beauty, craftsmanship, nobility, understanding of history, the classics, etc.) in education and averse to relentless embrace of public utility or moralism (recall here). This tradition is opposed to diverse forms of tyranny. When American conservatives, even when taught by Leo Strauss and his students, embrace the Enlightenment project of Jefferson and Lincoln, I see them as adapting the virtues of conservatism to local their milieu. By now, the Enlightenment project, liberal democracy, and even the welfare state are part of our tradition, and so deserve careful conservation. Let's call thisType 1 conservatism.

As an aside, if one believes in providence, Type 1 conservatives are essentially tragic figures breaking the historical tidal waves and orienting these toward less bad outcomes they cannot endorse themselves. When one rejects such providence, Type 1 conservatives are essentially heroic--mocked from the point of view of reason and justice--who use their rhetorical and tactical genius to domesticate the ambitions of reason.

By contrast, Haivry and Hazony treat contemporary exponents of this Conservative anti-philosophical tradition as misguided. Sensing a world-historical moment, they construct a nationalist, religious Conservative philosophical tradition not just by a list of names ("Sir John Fortescue, Richard Hooker, Sir Edward Coke, John Selden, Sir Matthew Hale, Sir William Temple, Jonathan Swift, Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, John Dickinson, and Alexander Hamilton. Men such as George Washington, John Adams, and John Marshall...would also have placed themselves in this conservative tradition rather than with its opponents, whom they knew all too well") but also by emphasizing the "shared common ideas and principles" of these men, who on their account "saw themselves as part of a common tradition of English, and later Anglo-American, constitutionalism." Of these names, they spend most of their time on Fortescue (1394–1479), who was previously unknown to me and I am pleased to learn about, and Selden (known to me, in no small part, due to Haivry's work), who deserves more study. In turn, they connect Fortescu to the history of Biblical Hebraism.

Haifry and Hazony, treat Conservatism as a constitutional tradition, which embraces national distinctiveness, and that, as a matter of principle, stands both against authoritarian absolutism (associated with certain forms of monarchy/empire) as well as liberalism (associated with another form of universalism, namely rationalism, which is connected to Grotius and Locke). This conservative tradition is both pragmatic and gradualist, and proceeds by trial and error (which is why practice of common law matters so much to it), but rooted in natural law and the teachings of revelation and an embrace a national church (which provides basis for national unity and lack of dangerous conflict over what revelation teaches). To prevent misunderstanding, Haivry and Hazony are aware that Locke is ordinarily classified as an empiricist (in epistemology and psychology), but they treat him as a rationalist because of the axiomatic "elements of Locke’s political theory".... [that is, the “perfect freedom” and “perfect equality” that define the state of nature"]... "are not known from experience."

In sum, their let's call it Type 2 conservatismas a philosophical tradition has five core commitments:

(1) Historical Empiricism. The authority of government derives from constitutional traditions known, through the long historical experience of a given nation, to offer stability, well-being, and freedom. These traditions are refined through trial and error over many centuries, with repairs and improvements being introduced where necessary, while maintaining the integrity of the inherited national edifice as a whole. Such empiricism entails a skeptical standpoint with regard to the divine right of the rulers, the universal rights of man, or any other abstract, universal systems....

(2) Nationalism. The diversity of national experiences means that different nations will have different constitutional and religious traditions. The Anglo-American tradition harkens back to principles of a free and just national state, charting its own course without foreign interference, whose origin is in the Bible. These include a conception of the nation as arising out of diverse tribes, its unity anchored in common traditional law and religion. Such nationalism is not based on race, embracing new members who declare that “your people is my people, and your God is my God” (Ruth 1:16).

(3) Religion. The state upholds and honors the biblical God and religious practices common to the nation. These are the centerpiece of the national heritage and indispensable for justice and public morals. At the same time, the state offers wide toleration to religious and social views that do not endanger the integrity and well-being of the nation as a whole.

(4) Limited Executive Power. The powers of the king (or president) are limited by the laws of the nation, which he neither determines nor adjudicates. The powers of the king (or president) are limited by the representatives of the people, whose advice and consent he must obtain both respecting the laws and taxation.

(5) Individual Freedoms. The security of the individual’s life and property is mandated by God as the basis for a society that is both peaceful and prosperous, and is to be protected against arbitrary actions of the state. The ability of the nation to seek truth and conduct sound policy depends on freedom of speech and debate. These and other fundamental rights and liberties are guaranteed by law, and may be infringed upon only by due process of law.

The key genealogical move is to suggest that the American revolution founding is not exclusively indebted to Lockean rationalist-radicalism, but that "there were already two distinct political theories" in America one conservative one, associated with Hamilton, and the other more radical one associated with Jefferson (who is lumped together with English radicals influenced by Locke: "Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Charles James Fox, Charles Grey, Thomas Paine" who were Burke's target.) The high point of the radicals is the Declaration, and the high point of the Conservatives is the Constitution, which then gets corrupted -- there is always an ejection from Eden! -- by the influence of Jeffersonian separation of Church and State and, then, destroyed by FDR's New Deal. (They skip over Lincoln, which is odd.)**

It should be obvious, at once, that Haivry and Hazony have great difficulty finding a place for the non-Lockean, liberal tradition one can associate with the younger Burke and now primarily known to us from the writings of Hume, Montesquieu, Smith, Madison, Constant, Sophie de Grouchy, and, more recently, Hayek, or Shklar--this tradition has considerable overlap with their their Type 2 conservatism, but rejects their (2)-(3) as organizing principles (and has a more positive views about immigration). In my view, this non-Lockean tradition is not conservative because it also recognizes the political and prudential utility of having a normative and systematic ideal guiding one's pragmatic choices (see, for example, Hume's Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth), but it does so through a willingness to embrace a second-best ameliorative stance that gets articulated by way of dynamics of historical, practical reason. If one is interested in the complex interplay of different strands of liberalism, one could usefully start with Jacob T. Levy's excellent Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom.

In fact, Haivry and Hazony often sound like Hayek in their critique of what they call 'rationalism,' but are suspicious of his cosmopolitanism and lack his interest in commerce and trade.* Once this anti-Lockean Liberal tradition is allowed back into the historical story, one can immediate see that Liberalism has a lot more resources than Haifvry and Hazony recognize. The include resources for folk one may well understand as Type 1 conservative and that have long been comfortable, perhaps too comfortable, on the political Right.**

But let me close with an observation. Haivry and Hazony berate liberals for failing to grasp the menace of radical Islam. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that liberalism has been slow to articulate a proper response to it. But Haifvry and Hazony spend so much time trying to distinguish (Lockean) liberalism from their own Type 2 conservatism that they forget that their greatest difficulty is to distinguish themselves from ethno-religious-nationalists with a fondness for authoritarianism. (This is not to deny they have some such resources--their nationalism is self-consciously not ethnic.) In fact, even if one grants that Type 2 conservatism is a genuine historical tradition, Haifry and Hazony overlook the fact that totalitarianism is not the only species of tyranny opposed by liberals and, bless their souls, Type 1 conservatives: after all, we recognize that non-totalitarian, ethno-religious-nationalism (i.e., folk that reject their (4)-(5)) is the other true menace of our times (a case can be made that it often merges with versions of radical Islam), and we think that Type 2 conservatives like Haivry and Hazony run the risk of becoming the intellectual handmaidens of such petty, yet nasty, tyrants.

*I leave aside the fact that there are crucial liberal nationalists -- Mill, Lincoln, Mazzini -- that also do not fit their schema.

**Some other time, I'll return to the details of their historical narrative. For example, Haivry and Hazony make life easy for themselves by treating the Articles of Confederation as a de facto reductio of radical, Liberal principles. This is peculiar, because one may also see it as a reductio of true federalism of state sovereignty (when federalism is founded on war).

On the Crisis in Liberal Democracytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401bb0982f066970d2017-03-13T22:52:21+01:002017-03-14T18:19:20+01:00Max Weber spoke of an ethic of responsibility in politics. Part of that is the duty of respect for the structures and procedures that frame the political enterprise and that make deliberation and action with others possible. Since the invention of politics, some politicians have thrived on institutional irresponsibility. In...Eric Schliesser

Max Weber spoke of an ethic of responsibility in politics. Part of that is the duty of respect for the structures and procedures that frame the political enterprise and that make deliberation and action with others possible. Since the invention of politics, some politicians have thrived on institutional irresponsibility. In a remarkable biography published originally in 1982, the German historian Christian Meier wrote this about Julius Caesar:

Caesar was insensitive to political institutions and the complex ways in which they operate. . . . Since his year as consul, if not before, Caesar had been unable to see Rome’s institutions as autonomous entities. . . . He could see them only as instruments in the interplay of forces. His cold gaze passed through everything that Roman society still believed in, lived by, valued and defended. He had no feeling for the power of institutions . . . , but only for what he found useful or troublesome about them. . . . In Caesar’s eye’s no one existed but himself and his opponents. It was all an interpersonal game. . . . The scene was cleared of any suprapersonal elements. Or if any were left, they were merely props behind which one could take cover or with which one could fight.

Meier’s judgment of Caesar is complicated by his understanding that other participants in Roman politics had the opposite vice. They failed to grasp that the decrepit institutions of the Republic did need to be seen and maybe even “seen through” in a way that would permit the question of their restructuring to be raised.

But the point I want to make is that there is something reckless, even pathological, about a mode of political action in which the walls and structures intended to house actions of that kind become suddenly invisible, transparent, even contemptible to a given statesman. Such drastically unmediated proximity—“Now there is just you, and me, and the issue of my greatness” or “Now there is just you and me and our interest in justice”—is alarmingly like the press of millions of bodies against each other that Arendt associates with the destruction of thought and deliberation in mass society.—Jeremy Waldron (2012) “Political Political Theory: An Inaugural Lecture” 16-17 [HT Sara Amighetti]

l have been interested in the rise of Trump (recall), European neo-fascists, and European-born-and-bread Jihadists (recall) because I take them all to be symptoms of an underlying cultural and political malaise (recall). While there are non-trivial differences among these, they all share a rejection of liberal norms and values (most notably a fondness for violent rhetoric and lack of respect for those that may disagree), embrace political spectacle as a mode of communication and action, and understand the world in zero-sum terms. While it's too early to say if liberal democracy can survive so many internal challenges at once (and, perhaps, we're lucky that there is no foreign power strong enough to take advantage of our weakness), it is not a foregone conclusion it will survive even in the short term especially now that political control has fallen in the hands of anti-Liberal leadership Stateside.

As theorists, it's our task to address the current fragility of liberal institutions so that we can prepare the way for their revival one day. In so doing we should not underestimate the ideological and psychological pull of anti-Liberal sentiments, whether militant Islam or assertive, cultural (and racialized) nationalism; even so what needs to be understood is why liberal commitments have lost their ability to attract and inspire considerable groups of people. While the neo-Marxists are undoubtedly right to call attention to a generation-long rising inequality, stagnating incomes for ordinary peoples, the retrenching welfare state, and financial sector bail out(s) alongside austerity for the many, it is undeniable that the response to these facts has simultaneously been an abandonment of the political Left (not just Third Way left) by its natural constituency (even if one can discern stirrings of a revival in some places).

Waldron's (2012) inaugural lecture correctly calls attention to the significance and danger of politicians who thrive on institutional irresponsibility (and, as is clear from larger context, he castigates theorists' lack of interest in such politicians and the institutions that generate them). Waldron notes that such institutional irresponsibility has been a feature of liberal political life for some time and is, in fact, a natural consequence of familiar practices. Here I want to call attention to two features of his diagnosis.

First, he thinks that some influential, ruling values of liberal life (efficiency, utility, etc.) undermine liberal institutions. This is illustrated by an extraordinary passage:

In my home country, New Zealand, it was budgetary considerations that explained the abolition of the upper house, the Legislative Council, in 1950 [!], and in recent years a similarly ruthless efficiency-based approach has led to the elimination of a Parliamentary quorum in the House of Representatives, not to mention the elimination of any requirement that members have to be personally present in the chamber in order to vote (what a waste of their time, it is said, when it could be spent more efficiently somewhere else); the Whips just call out their nominal party strength whenever there is a division. In general, in New Zealand, the efficiency approach to political institutions has engendered the growth of a bullying mentality that insists that, since the government is almost always bound to get its way in the House of Representatives, there can be no real objection to the truncation of formal parliamentary debate by repeated use of urgency and closure motions. It is a sorry spectacle. (11)

Here Waldron is describing a sixtyyear arc in which considerations of efficiency and utility get so intertwined with the practice of power that they while they leave the form of liberal institutions intact they effectively efface the substance of these institutions. New Zealand is not treated as an anomaly, but as kind of run-of-the-mill-example-of-the-road-to-liberal-ruin in which there are bad "side-effects of the operation of our institutions on people." (In context Waldron is quoting Mill about good side-effects.) Waldron's observation suggests that what is known as new public management (associated with neo-liberalism) is, in fact, always a live possibility within the tradition--something foreshadowed by Swift's A Modest Proposal (recall).**

Waldron quotes with approval a key insight of J.S. Mill's "great book" Considerations on Representative Government: "it is a personal injustice to withhold from any one . . . the ordinary privilege of having his voice reckoned in the disposal of affairs in which he has the same interest as other people...Every one has a right to feel insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account." In context, Mill is defending the positive role of parliament as a debating club. According to Mill the role of parliament is, in part, a means toward recognition and respect of all individuals. As Waldron notes a genuine willingness to debate has become a rarity in our houses of representatives long before the present.+ A political culture that is incapable of genuine debate is one in which recognition may be impossible.

Second, in the quote from Meier, Waldron hints at our elites's (and theorists') inability to understand the present (that is I am reading the claim about Roman elites -- that "they failed to grasp that the decrepit institutions of the Republic did need to be seen and maybe even “seen through” in a way that would permit the question of their restructuring to be raised" -- as applying to our times.) Waldron turns this into claim about institutional functioning (which fits his larger, admirable program of focusing political theory on real world functioning and stability institutions); but I am inclined to articulate the point as a failure of leadership that is unable to discern the rot within and so is unable to engage in a restorative project while still possible. This failure is widespread in our political, economic, and intellectual ruling classes.++

This very last point suggests that a liberal education fails to prepare its ruling members to understand their own society.*** (I include myself in this category: I view my blogging of the last few years as a very public record of attempted catch-up.) More important, our liberal education has failed in creating the conditions that may preserve itself.

*There are interesting issues here about the role of social recognition facilitating earthly attachments.

**Waldron notes the significance of this with a nod to "Montesquieu [who] believed that a lack of interest forms, processes, and structures was typical of a society en route to a despotic form of government." (22)

+In fact, one may wonder if there ever was an age of genuine parliamentary debate in light of growth of party discipline from an early period.

***Again, this is in the spirit of Waldron: "at the same time, one wonders whether the vast majority of our PPE students, who will not become lecturers but who will take up positions in business and industry, in journalism or think-tanks, in the arts or in government, are being given the preparation that they need in the theory of politics." (18)

On Plato's System of Natural Liberty (and Adam Smith's True Religion)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401b7c7cb7cab970b2015-09-10T11:16:24+02:002015-09-10T11:53:14+02:00After thirteen years in the profession (and by switching disciplinary affiliation), I finally have the chance to teach, and thereby read through, Plato's Republic -- a text that was central to the DNA of the ongoing discussions in several departments at my graduate institution (The University of Chicago) -- to...Eric Schliesser

After thirteen years in the profession (and by switching disciplinary affiliation), I finally have the chance to teach, and thereby read through, Plato's Republic -- a text that was central to the DNA of the ongoing discussions in several departments at my graduate institution (The University of Chicago) -- to undergraduates (in a course on Political Utopianism).* Over the years I had checked various passages, to refresh my memory, in the context of my scholarship and blogging, but as I prepared my first class on it (we're doing four three hour sessions), I recognized at once that I had forgotten not just details, but non-trivial features of the book (for example the exchange with Cephalus at the start of Book 1 about which soon). Anyway, teaching the book generated sparkling class discussion and prompted some new impressions.

One striking feature of Book 2 is that the true city (372e)-- Socrates' first city in speech (369b-372d) -- is introduced as a heuristic for something else (to unearth the nature of justice in the individual): “Is not the city larger than the man?... Then, perhaps, there would be more justice in the larger object and more easy to apprehend." (368e) In a large-scale, complete (or fully grown) (371e) model distinguishing features may be more available, and (if so) in virtue of size more easily unearthed and analyzed. While this strategy is compatible with certain forms of reductionism, it is notable that in Plato we study (a feature of) a big object in order to understand (that same feature in) the smaller ones (see Gulliver's Travels, Book 2). Obviously, this involves a bet on scale-invariance.

Here I treat the so-called "city of Pigs" (Glaucon's phrase (372d) as Socrates' genuine normative ideal or baseline. The title of this post is, of course, a (serious) joke. But not just a joke. For, Socrates' healthy city has an uncanny resemblance to Smith's system of natural liberty. (In the old Loeb translation Paul Shorey also notes this.) There are, of course, subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences, but it is worth reminding ourselves of the important similarities: both 'ideal states' have an extensive division of labor and, thus, specialization; a monetized economy; are broadly egalitarian; are open to internal and external trade (that is, generate a surplus of goods and leisure time); are free of slaves; they are pacific; are property-owning; have a minimal state structure; and are famine free (about which more below). They also rely on a non-trivial distinction between necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries (see below). There is one further important similarity, but that's the speculative last paragraph below.

Of course, Socrates assumes a differentiated human nature (the differentiation is, in part, explicitly physical [371c & 371e] and natural skill) whereas Smith, as a good analytical egalitarian, assumes (agreeing with Thrasymachus) a roughly uniform human nature: "the difference...between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education." (On analytical egalitarianism see here and here). To be sure, there is also a crucial difference between Smith and Thrasymachus: Smith puts himself (the modeler) inside his model (philosophers are no different in human motivation) [echoing Hobbes and Mandeville], whereas Thrasymachus' vanity (Peart and Levy) leads him to treat his own expertise as somehow distinct from the folk he describes. (It's true that Thrasymachus is not called vain, but his blush (350d) reveals that he recognizes that he is working with an inconsistent model in which he either has to give up on his own elitism and embrace for himself the base -- proto-utility-maximizing -- description he gives of others, or has to insist that in virtue of his expertise he is somehow different from the ordinary agent. And if he, why not others?) But here, in the true city (369b-372d), Socrates does not assume, I think, a hierarchy of types (as he does elsewhere). So, the disagreement with Smith is truly minimal.+

In Socrates's true city, population growth is (to use Smith's terms) regulated by their wealth (372b) and available fertile country (372c)--thereby avoiding poverty and wars of acquisition. That is, there will be (to use Malthus's phrase) a moral check on off-spring. But this is just one of the side constraints. For, more subtly, in Socrates' ideal city, rather than generating luxury surplus, the population is allowed to grow when possible (so that, wealth/income per head stays roughly the same over the time). This is also pretty much Smith's ideal model for the right relationship between food supply, income, and population growth. [It is, I think granted by Socrates that conveniences of life (olives, cheese, salt, etc.) are allowed to grow (within moderation) and this may be culture relative; if the previous sentence is right then Smith's model is very close to Socrates's.]**

There is one very important difference between Socrates's true city and Smith's system of natural liberty. (No, I am not talking about the role of competition or Socrates's embrace of vegetarianism.) In Socrates's true city philosophy is absent. I believe this is due to the fact that philosophy is not needed, as a trade among many, in a healthy and proper functioning state. This presupposes, of course, controversially that philosophy is never purely contemplative nor a basic human need. The previous sentences are compatible with philosophy as a pure leisure activity (about which more below).

Finally, in Socrates's true city, there is room for religion. But this religion is neither the ordinary superstitious religion in which the Gods need to be bribed out of fear (see, especially, the exchange with Cephalus at 331b) nor the rationalistic religion that Socrates will articulate in the more luxurious city (378ff). But rather, in the true city there is a life-enhancing,joyful religion: "they will feast with their children, drinking of their wine thereto, garlanded and singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship." I had never previously assimilated this proto-Nietzschean strain in Socrates. (I think this feature was in part obscured for me by Nietzsche's polemic against the life-denying, sickly aspects of Platonism.) It is, of course, possible that the symposia will generate philosophical discussions.

I close with a further, speculative thought. I have long wondered what the content of Adam Smith's pure and rational religion, "such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established" (emphases added) might be. Earlier, I kind of focused on Smith's debts to Locke, Spinoza, and Enlightenment thinkers (like Voltaire and Hume). But in reflecting on the structural similarities between Socrates' ideal city and Smith's regulative ideal, I wondered if Smith, too, -- who insists that on this point there is consensus among the wise of all ages -- is not signaling his desire for a Socratic, that is, joyful religion.

Pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established"- - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/05/lockes-redefinition-of-religion.html#sthash.RIBiY8MY.dpuf

*The book is an astounding teaching vehicle: class discussion was sparkling.

**Obviously, I am ignoring Smith's higher tolerance for some luxury spending, although he is very hostile to it.

+Epistemically, Smith is in a slightly better position, because Socrates has, as my students emphasized, limited tools to explain the discovery of the unique specialization of each.

On Disturbed Aesthetics and True Politics (Swift's A Modest Proposal)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ee247e3883401bb0833e1b5970d2015-05-25T11:42:25+02:002015-05-25T11:47:11+02:00It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an...Eric Schliesser

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms.--Swift (1729).

A Modest Proposal begins (the quoted sentence above) with an ugly sight; we are not called to sympathize with the beggars in rags--looking at them, even reflecting on them, are downers. Rather it's taken for granted that we side with what we might call the disturbed aesthetics of those that encounter an urban landscape filled with miserably dressed, begging poor. In context it is implied that encountering orderly, working poor would not generate such aesthetic revulsion. Rather than fleeing the urban scene to find the sublime in the wild (as Burke would soon urge), some are moved to propose an aesthetic sanitation project. It's this impulse that is at the root of many noble reform projects and Disneyfication, but also of many modern species of tyranny, grandiose and petty.

It's easy to miss the role such disturbed aesthetics plays in Swift's narrator's argument because when he introduces aesthetic pleasure later in the context of luxury consumption by the landed (and commercial) rich, very different, more familiar notions of beauty operate. Such beauty is all about (to use eighteenth century terms) refinement and delicacy as well as status.

To be clear the narrator, who proposes the project of reform, himself is very careful not to reveal if he, too, is one of those urban walkers disturbed by ugliness. But he knows that is how he can grab his audience's first attention, and he is wise enough to understand that one mention is sufficient.

Swift's tale is, as is well known, the dark prophecy of Neoliberalism: he sees through the complex interaction among the mutually supporting inner logic(s) of markets, technocracy, utilitarianism, patriotism, and commodification. But unlike many later critics and observers who use such jargon, Swift, the poet, understands the source or wellspring of their enduring appeal such that passionate human beings might sacrifice all, and especially others, for such cold logics.

I could end with the previous paragraph. A Modest Proposal is also a tale about the true art of politics. For, Swift implies that if we can recognize the role that disturbed aesthetics plays in driving our politics, we can channel this sanitizing energy into less harmful projects ("other expedients") and social arrangements. This requires not just the shaming of the grossly immoral, but making alternatives attractive to the public by seeming to be responsive to our aesthetic needs. That is to say, politics is also aesthetic prophecy.